Islamic Trojan

Posted on September 6th, 2005 by .
Categories: Misc. News.


An Islamic Trojan! A trojan horse? The wellknown fifth column? No a computer virus that tries to disrupt visits the pornographic websites by displaying messages from the Qur�an.

The low-risk Yusufali-A Trojan horse monitors the websites Windows users are visiting. If the malware sees one of a set of trigger words (such as “teen� or “sex”) in the url it minimises the window so the user cannot see its content and displays a message from the Qur�an instead. The message, partly written in Arabic, contains the following English text:

Know, therefore, that there is no god but Allah, and ask forgiveness for they fault, and for the men and women who believe: for Allah knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes.

“Unlike other malware, it appears this Trojan horse isn’t trying to steal money or confidential information, but acting as a moral guardian instead – blocking the viewing of websites it determines are unsavoury,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

Nothing new but certainly kind of funny. Other examples are:

Malware featuring an Islamic theme is rare but not unprecedented. Previous examples have include the Mawanella worm which highlighted the friction between Muslims and Buddhists in Sri Lanka and the Cycle worm which contained a message about life in Iran.

For my Dutch speaking readers, see also Nu.nl: Pornosurfer geconfronteerd met koranteksten

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